[NLRS] AirScout for aircraft scatter

[Dr. Gerald N. Johnson]

Longitude sign? Seems like the world along the Greenwich meridian and 
half a world east prefers east positive, while we get along fine west 
positive. Makes no difference to world wide software other than wrong 
sing on li=ongitude tends to not get the are you expected. I faced this 
in weather drawing software decades ago (results still running at 
www.weather.net) so in the command structure of my command file driven 
drawing program it has commands, "set west positive" and "set west 
negative" as some data comes west positive and some west negative. 
Occasionally data comes 93W of 14E, but that's less common. Some 
programs that derive data from model outputs or large are data sources 
like standard observations or METAR I controlled the sign with the 
stations database by call sign or one of their command file available 
commands is "set west positive" or "set west negative". So as long as 
the user knows what each data source is, my software doesn't care, so 
long as its kept informed.

73, Jerry, K0CQ

On 6/8/2013 9:33 AM, Doug Reed wrote:
>
>
> I received a reply from Frank, DL2ALF, the AirScout author this
> morning. He said the program should work as long as I set the plane
> area correctly. I made the changes again and this time it is working.
>
> I know I made similar changes before, but perhaps I reversed
> something. All I can say for sure is I made the changes again and the
> display is now showing planes moving around the area needed to make
> the path I requested.
>
> Specifically, I asked for the path from N0NAS to K0CQ, that being two
> calls that first came to mind. They both populated location info
> automatically.
>
> In the Options/Planes page, I set:
>
> Minimum altitude 1000m
> Maximum altitude 20000m
>
> Minimum Longitude -100
> Maximum longitude -70
> Minimum Latitude 30
> Maximum longitude 78
>
> I also hit the button to "Clear Positions" which emptied the plane
> database of the European position information. Then "Apply" and "OK"
> to exit. The map showed the correct locations and planes appeared
> after I started the program running.
>
> The plane area above is much larger than the area I'll be looking at
> on the map. The numbers were chosen to cover most of the midwest and
> are near the maximum size allowed for a download from the Globe
> elevation database. You have to do that download manually from the
> Globe web site mentioned on the Options/Globe page. OTOH, I'm still
> not seeing elevation data.... I may need to try again with a smaller
> area.
>
> I still don't know what my original error was, but AirScout is working
> fine for me now. I also tried changing the path to N0NAS and VE4MA,
> and that worked immediately too.
>
> But I'll warn you, if you drag-and-drop to change any station
> location, it will remember that change and use it next time you
> request that station. Even if you do QRZ lookup again, it will use the
> location you changed to, not the one in the QRZ database. I tried
> using call sign options like /p and -1, but it tries to validate them
> against QRZ.com and will not use them if the data doesn't match or
> doesn't exist.
>
> I switched back to the default 4000m and 12000m altitude numbers and
> everything still worked, and the active scatter region on the map
> became smaller as it should.
>
> I think the best thing I can say is that there seem to be regular
> flights from Winnipeg to MSP and Winnipeg to Chicago, so planes seem
> to stay on the desired path for long periods of time which should make
> plane scatter fairly "easy" for that path.......
>
> So try it again guys and see if you can get it working. It does seem
> to be working for me now.
>
> 73, Doug Reed, N0NAS.
>